Another Skeleton in the Closet
by Morbidly Obscure
Summary: He Who Walks Behind the Rows will always avenge his children, and justice tends to be twisted in Gatlin. A tale of the evils and mysteries that can be hidden in a small town.
1. Chapter 1

**This was originally going to be a oneshot, but it kept getting longer, so instead it's gonna be three short little chapters. Hope you guys like, please review!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Gatlin, Hemingford, He Who Walks Behind the Rows, etc. I do, however, own the plot and any characters that you don't recognize...but I don't really want them. You can have them, if you want, but watch out for Rose—she bites.**

**This all takes place several years before the massacre, just so you know.**

**~*~**

Seven years ago, on a blisteringly hot day in the middle of August, Micheal Ivers killed his little sister. Well, he didn't actually physically kill her, but he sure as hell felt like he did. It had been one of those endless, painfully boring summer days that Gatlin seemed to specialize in, but for once Micheal wasn't bored. No, today Micheal's friend Malachi had brought over some of the highly interesting materials that he had confiscated from his older brother's room.

When Micheal looked back, it seemed that the whole day had a strange, surreal fog clouding it, like a dream that couldn't have possibly ever really happened. He remembered the way the sun filtered through the dusty, curtain-less window of his room, flaring off of Malachi's crimson hair and casting a square of light on the warped, wooden floor. He remembered the dull bang of his heart as he listened tensely for the rumble of gravel that would signify his mother's return from the store. He remembered the split second of pure, abject terror as the door of his room swung open with a sharp squeak of protesting hinges, and a childish voice whined,

"Mikey, I'm _hungry!_ Can you make me a peanut butter and jelly sandw--"

The twelve-year-olds froze like deer in headlights as the door opened fully, revealing Micheal's younger sister Rose, who stopped mid-request as she processed the scene before her. Her already huge gray-blue eyes widened even further before taking on a sort of malevolent glee. Then, Micheal's stomach sunk when his sister uttered the words most universally feared and hated by every older sibling in existence:

"I'm telling!" Then the child shot from the room, short brown bob flying about her face as she ran.

"Oh no you don't!" Micheal yelled, spitting out the still smoking joint and jumping up from the floor to chase his sibling.

Rose made it all the way to the kitchen before her brother caught up with her and tackled her to the ground. Just now, it didn't matter to Micheal that Rose was just a little kid, or that his mother could come home at any moment, or that Malachi was still waiting up in his room with no clue as to what to do. No, all that mattered right now to Micheal was stopping Rose by any means necessary.

"Get _off_ me!" The six-year-old cried, squirming ineffectually while Micheal pinned her down.

"Where do you think you're going, huh?" Micheal demanded, finding a perverse enjoyment in his sister's fear-filled look.

"To tell mom!" Rose declared as she continued to wriggle about, looking everywhere but Micheal's eyes.

"Oh yeah, you little tattle-tale?" Micheal tightened his hold on his sister's wrists. Some part of him knew that he was being cruel and even felt bad about it, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. Rose didn't answer, but tears had started leaking from her tightly closed eyes, falling like shattered glass on the dull kitchen tile. Micheal gave her a disgusted look, "Oh, is the little baby gonna cry?" He mocked, enjoying how much power he held in this situation.

"Mikey, you're hurting me!" Rose ignored the rhetorical question, "Where's mom?"

"At the store. And what are you going to do about it, crybaby?"

Rose was sobbing too hard to answer now, and suddenly all of the feelings of triumph disappeared, and Micheal just felt crummy inside. The twelve-year-old let go, stood up, and backed away, now wanting nothing more than to get as far away from the kitchen as possible. Realizing that she was free, Rose scrabbled up from the floor and darted for the door. Once her hand was safely on the handle, she gave Micheal a wary look before sniffling. The tears were still streaking down her little round face.

"I'm gonna make you sorry for this!" Rose yelled at Micheal, who couldn't seem to look straight at her anymore, "Just you wait! One day, you're gonna be really, _really_ sorry!"

And with that, she was gone, off to find her mother. Micheal didn't care.

About an hour later, Micheal's mom came home, but Rose wasn't with her. Rose's bike was gone, but she wasn't anywhere around town or with any of her friends. Nearly everybody in Gatlin abandoned everything to look for the child, spending every waking hour with increasingly desperate searches, but there was no Rose.

About a week later, Micheal and a group of other searchers found the girl. On another stifling hot day of searching, Micheal had pushed back a stand of corn, only to spy one of Rose's dirty, beat-up mary-janes. A few feet later, they found Rose's over-turned bike, with it's pink and white tassels sprayed out against dirt, then there was Rose's plaid jumper, tangled up in the corn, and then there was Rose, her bruised little body split open, her insides stinking and frying in the hot summer sun.

Micheal's family moved to Hemingford that year, and Micheal would've been happy if he never set eyes on Gatlin again.

The whole incident came as a shock to everybody, and how couldn't it? A little girl, killed brutally by some psycho so close to Hansen's Cafe, where so many other children spend their time. Yes, it certainly shook the little town as no other event ever had. For a while afterward, parents watched their kids a little more closely, and curfews and new rules for child safety were instigated, but after a time nothing else happened, and things quieted down.

Finally, Rose's story could no longer be found in even the back pages of Gatlin's local newspaper, and the whole town seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Before long, the entire debacle became nothing more than a warning for parents to use on their children ("now be careful, or you might end up like that little Ivers girl.") By August of the next year, the incident had been passed off as a horrible fluke and nearly forgotten; after all, things like that just didn't _happen_ in Gatlin.

**~*~**

**The next update should be in a day or two, tell me what you think of the first chapter!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Well, next chapter, here it is. A tiny bit later than I projected, but also a little bit longer. Please review and tell me what you think!**

**~*~**

_We are way too old for this shit_, Micheal thought to himself as he watched his friends laugh and shove at each other in the front seat of Bobby Dalton's mud-splattered pickup truck. Actually, when Micheal came to think of it, they were way too old for a lot of things; too old to still be living with their parents, too old to be acting like a bunch of kids, and too old to still be stuck in Hemingford with no discernible direction for their lives.

Actually, it was for this reason that the group of five were friends in the first place—they were all nineteen and _not_ in college. What did it matter that they had barely known each other in high school? They were together now, and spent nearly every night like this, goofing off and pretending they were still in high school.

Yes, they were way too old for a lot of things, but, most of all, they were way too old to be going out in the middle of the night in search of demons.

It didn't take a lot to get a town like Hemingford excited, so news of the Gatlin massacre was like a bomb exploding on the area, and _everybody_ was talking about it, even a year after the whole business had been revealed. Rumors kept getting recycled, recreated, and recirculated, keeping everybody in a constant state of excitement and near-panic.

After all, how long would it be before something like this happened again? A town full of children going crazy and murdering their parents in cold blood for a demonic entity residing within the corn, then quietly running the town for several years completely under the radar and killing all those who happened to pass through? It was all just so terrible and frightening and wickedly wonderful, like poisoned candy given to a bunch of starving kids. The papers claimed mass-hysteria, but talk of evil spirits spread in whispers, and what did the authorities intend to _do_ with all of the remaining children, anyway?

Gatlin certainly had become very hard to avoid these days, much like the flu. Up until this point, Micheal had been able to steadfastly ignore the place, and now, for the first time in seven years, he was going back to his hometown. Perhaps it was irrational to pin his own misfortune on Gatlin itself, but, given the recent circumstances, Micheal was beginning to think that his instinctual, near-obsessive avoidance was more than just the after effect of a traumatic incident.

Either way, paying an impromptu visit to good old Gatlin didn't sit well with Micheal...but it was just so _exciting_. That's why they were all doing it, after all, for a little excitement, for a thrill. Besides, Hemingford was so damned _boring_, especially for a bunch of nineteen-year-olds with nothing to do, and the promise of excitement drew them like moths to a bonfire.

Gatlin was supposed to be completely abandoned now, and police had stopped checking the place out ages ago, according to Bobby. Then there were the rumors floating about, of the bloodied weapons, arcane books, and cryptic writings left throughout the emptied town, and the even more impossible whispers of there-and-gone fires, strange voices and childrens' laughter, and inexplicable movement still seen and heard coming from the vicinity of Gatlin. This combination made for an irresistible attraction, a set of unsolved mysteries that Micheal and his friends had taken it upon themselves to try and solve.

Sure, it was practically guaranteed that nothing of interest would happen—they weren't even really _hoping_ for anything—but it provided a night's entertainment, and at least they could say that they were there, that they hadn't been afraid. It was juvenile, but they just _had_ to.

So now here they were: Micheal, Bobby, and Bobby's girlfriend, Taylor, parked in a near deserted gas station/convenience store waiting for Jase and Jess to get off work. Jase and Jess; had a nice ring to it, which was, as far as Micheal could tell, the only reason they dated. Micheal exhaled a long plume of smoke from his cigarette as he watched Jason Donovan argue halfheartedly with some redneck trucker in a wife-beater over the price of diesel and the lack of Twinkies in the service station, and Micheal's bored gaze drifted to the glassy windows of the convenience store.

Through the stickers advertising beer, cigarettes, and lotto tickets, Micheal saw Jessica Walter's skinny frame leaning against the Slurpee machine, staring out into space and pretending to watch for shoplifters. The only people left in the store besides Jess and the older cashier were a couple of thirteen-year-old boys with long, sloppy hair and dirty tie-dyed T-shirts who had been loitering around the dimly lit gas station all night, practicing tricks on their beat-up skateboards.

Micheal stifled a snicker at the way the cashier watched the two punks with a comically wary expression. Ever since everyone had become aware of the whole Gatlin business, adults seemed to be expecting their kids to go ape-shit and try to kill them any day now. Hell, maybe they would, just for a little fun—Hemingford really was _that_ boring.

A loud _honk_ blared raucously when Taylor's elbow bashed against the horn on the steering wheel. Micheal winced, Taylor giggled, and Bobby just adjusted the position of the skimpily dressed girl on his lap, all the while remaining completely oblivious to the death-glare coming from the trucker, who still had yet to leave..

In the service station, the two boys slid their sticker-covered boards over to the Slurpee station, where one tried to flirt with Jess while his friend sniggered furtively in the background. Jess looked at them through jaded eyes and asked if they would like cherry or blue raspberry.

Once the kids had payed for the drinks, Jess proceeded to usher the cashier out, insisting that she would close up for the night. Once the red-haired woman had left, Jess switched off the lights, grabbed a six pack of whatever-beer and exited the shop, locking the door behind her. On her way out, Jess passed the two boys from before sitting on their skateboards. The pair made cat-calls through mouthfuls of chips that they most certainly had not payed for, returning promptly to their pilfered snacks when Jess ignored them completely..

Finally, the redneck was pulling away after getting his gas. Jase held his hand out for the money that the trucker had yet to give up. In lieu of paying, the man spat on the ground at Jase's feet.

"Freak," He sneered before gunning the engine and pulling out.

"Yeah, a nice night to you too, Sir" Jason called after him. He ran a hand through his dark, already messy hair and rolled his eyes at Jess, who returned his look sympathetically.

"Hey, you two coming?" Bobby honked the horn again and yelled out the open window, "I don't have air-conditioning in thing, and it's like a freaking oven in here."

"Cool it, Bobby," Jess called in response, "It's not gonna be any colder in Gatlin."

All the same, the couple walked more quickly towards the car and crammed into the back seat with Micheal.

"Nice hair, Mike," Jess commented as she slid into the ripped leather interior. Micheal groaned and tugged the baseball cap farther down on his head, hoping to hide the misshapen, almost-mullet he had ended up with at the barbershop today. Never again would he try to look like Billy Idol. Ever.

In the end, Micheal just sighed, "Give me one of those beers."

Without another word—_bless her heart—_Jess handed Micheal a can, and he couldn't help but smile at her. The avenging angel of alcohol. Micheal held the pleasantly cool can against his head for a moment before popping it open and taking a long swig.

"Rough day for you too, huh?" Jase observed, raising an eyebrow.

"Not that bad," Micheal confided, "Just kinda burnt, I guess."

"Bummer," Taylor muttered absently as she applied shimmery orange lip gloss (_Peach Passion_, she reminded them constantly.) The sickly sweet scent of it mingled with the ingrained smells of stale beer and cigarette smoke. She popped her lips once and craned her neck to look in the mirror.

"Trying to look good for the devil-worshipers?" Bobby teased, earning a chuckle from Jase and not much else.

"They're not devil-worshipers," Jess reminded him, "the kids worshiped that 'He Who Walks Behind the Rows' thing, not Satan, and _that's_ what we're looking for."

Of all of them, Jess was probably the most sincerely interested in the massacre, as evidenced by the fact tat she had saved every single article from every paper she could find on the subject.

"Whatever," Bobby grumbled, staring out at the empty, pothole-riddled road, "it's freaky shit any way you slice it."

"Freaky shit happens in Gatlin, sometimes," Micheal said vaguely, barely realizing he had spoken out loud until Jase gave him a strange look.

"Hey, yeah, you used to live in the freak town, right?" Jase recalled, and Micheal shrugged, not very thrilled to be on the spot at the moment.

"Whoa. So, did you _know_ any of those psycho kids?" Now Jess was staring at him with wide, excited eyes.

"Of course I did," was all Micheal said, looking away from his friends and staring at the endless corn flashing by his window.

The question made him uncomfortable, mostly because that fact was what freaked him out the most. He had known those kids; he had played tag with older boys and pulled the girls' pigtails when he was a kid, and he had chaperoned the younger ones as they trick 'r treated with Rose. Of course he knew them, he had known each and every one of them. This hadn't even really hit home until he had scanned the list of names in one of the papers regarding the matter. Right there in black and white, there had been Joseph Jameson—Rose used to ride bikes with him to and from school—and then there had been Malachi Boardman, Micheal's one-time best friend. Micheal hadn't spoken to the redhead since they were both twelve years old, but after seeing his name on that paper, he wished he had. Micheal had known all of those kids all right, and they had all done the impossible.

Just as Micheal finished thinking this, the dim headlights of the car flickered over the ancient sign:

Gatlin: 1 Mile

Well, Micheal was ready for anything; he just hoped Gatlin was prepared to deliver.


	3. Chapter 3

**Right, next chapter! There will be two more short-is ones after this, which is mostly just transitional, and the next one is probably going up during the weekend or something. Thanks for the reviews!**

**~*~**

"Quick vote," Bobby had to yell to be heard over the static-marred Queen song blasting from the radio, "who here thinks there's anything to this demon shit, and who says the little bastards were just nuts?"

"I vote nuts," Jase played along, blowing a plume of smoke from his cancer stick into Jess's face.

"Ewww," Jess gave Jase a shove before chiming in herself, "I'm gonna have to go with the demon."

"Psycho," Jase teased his girlfriend, who just stuck her tongue out at him in response.

Taylor bit her thumbnail, "I dunno, like, what if there really is a demon? How do you fight that? What does a demon even look like, anyway?"

"Like Mr. Tanner, my tenth grade algebra teacher," Bobby chortled.

"Yeah, bald with huge glasses, orthopedic shoes, and a giant 'F' stamp," Jase went along with his friend's lame joke.

"Yeah, shoulda brought him along, I'd be plenty happy if the demon just ate him...or whatever the thing's supposed to do," Bobby reflected, "and I say the kids were crazy."

Jess rolled her eyes before looking over at Micheal, "What's your verdict, Mike?"

"Yeah, what does our town expert say?" Bobby turned eagerly to look at Micheal as well before Taylor yelled at him to watch the road.

Micheal had no idea as to what he was going to say until he actually said it, "I vote...demon."

"Yes!" Jess pumped her fist as though she had won some huge argument.

Now Taylor was looking a little more nervous, twisting around to peer at Micheal with wide, overly made-up eyes, "You really think so, Mikey?" She asked softly, and Micheal felt a strange lurch; no one had called him Mikey besides Rose, not even his parents or any of his friends. He shook it off, _Damn, I'm so out of it tonight._

Outwardly, Micheal smiled at Taylor, feeling the need to reassure her, "I don't know for sure or anything, but even if there ever was a demon, I bet it's not there any more," Micheal said, even though he wouldn't bet anything on that at all.

"Well that's what we're here to find out!" Jess exclaimed, clapping her hands together, and her dark eyes were hot and excited again.

"Amen to that, sister!" Bobby shouted, proving once again his inability to stay out of a conversation for more than twenty seconds as he rounded a sharp curve.

Micheal groaned inwardly and prayed that Bobby would run out of "jokes" soon. No sooner had Micheal finished thinking this than the tires of the pick-up truck squealed to keep from slamming into the barbed wire fence that was suddenly before them.

"Shit!" Bobby yelled as the fence seemed to spring up in front of the car. Taylor shrieked and Bobby slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The car screeched to a stop just before the fence, jerking them all forward in their seats and causing Jess to slam against Micheal. As the tornado of red-brown dust settled around them, the group let out a collective shaky laugh.

"Close one," Jase whistled to himself.

"Welcome to Gatlin," Micheal muttered, and Jase punched him in the arm and told him to stop being such a prophet of doom.

The fence had been put up shortly after the massacre, most likely to keep bored thrill-seekers like themselves the hell out. The nineteen-year-olds slowly got out of the car, leaving the headlights on and the radio blaring, even though it was practically all static by now. Bobby rooted around in the trunk of the car for flashlights and anything else that might be useful.

In the glare of the headlights, they drank cheap beer and past around a box of stale doughnuts Taylor had found on the floor of the car, and the whole scene carried the disturbing feeling of a last meal. Despite their overtly casual poses, they all stared warily through the fence into the sad, empty town illuminated by the headlights.

Finally, Jess tossed her beer can onto the ground somewhere and took something shiny and square from the trunk of the car approached the group again, "Hey, check this out!"

"That is _not_ what I think it is," Taylor eyed the object.

"I dug it out of my attic, I forgot I even had it!" Jess's grin widened as she looked affectionately at the box. Soon, everybody was grinning as the headlights lit up the glossy surface of the Ouija Board, "We can like, commune with demon and shit."

"I haven't used one of those things since I was twelve!" Jase declared, hopping up to examine the thing, "God, I can't believe you still have one."

"Those things are so freaky," Taylor laughed, "one time, in sixth grade, it pointed to 'C', and I went out with Cal Asher the next week, totally weird."

"At a party this one time, it spelled out 'DED', and Savannah Wesley's dog died the next day," Jase put in happily, and now they were all laughing and sharing their freakiest Ouija Board moments.

All previous tensions vanished, and cigarettes were being ground and beer cans being chucked wherever. Last of all, Bobby cut the truck's engine, leaving them with the moon and stars for light and the crickets and cicadas for noise.

_Everybody ready?_ It wasn't spoken, but it passed through all of them, and everybody was ready, to face whatever was in store for them. So, armed with two mostly operational flashlights, an Ouija Board, and Bobby's father's bowie knife, they went out to face Gatlin.

**~*~**

**So, what do you think is gonna happen? Free cookies to anyone who can guess right!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Wow, I kinda left this story to rot, which is pretty ridiculous because I've had it totally planned out from the beginning *kicks self* Anyway, there's going to be two more chapters after this one (yeah, I know, I keep elongating it) before I'm done with this story completely. Thanks for the reviews, guys! They're probably the most helpful feedback I've gotten on any story, and you have no idea how much I appreciate it. Don't forget to tell me what you thought of this chapter!**

*** * ***

The fence, of course, had been a joke. You don't grow up in Hemingford without learning how to jump a barbed wire fence. So here they were, past the point of no return, in the belly of the beast, out of the frying pan and into the oven, pick your cliché. Gatlin was theirs for the night.

The last thing Micheal ever thought he'd feel towards Gatlin was nostalgia, but here it was, crashing over him in waves. He felt removed from his friends as they swaggered through the ghost town. With each building they passed, Micheal's memory kicked higher into overdrive, and his belly lurched uncomfortably, threatening to spill the ethanol burning its way through his stomach lining.

There was the church where he and his friends hung outside after services and slip worms down the backs of the girls' pretty dresses, and there was Hansen's, where he and Malachi used to play the game machine in back and look up the waitresses' skirts. Christ, this was weird, and getting weirder with every step Micheal took. The police hadn't done such a hot job cleaning the place up, as evidenced by the deranged axioms and arcane insignias smeared across the glass storefronts.

Damn, how can anything be so different and so the same? It's not right. It's wrong. It's—Micheal took a final swig of beer. He held the can tightly like a teddy bear, as if the metal cylinder could protect him from God-knows-what. The alcohol numbed Micheal out, insulated him from anything that would be too much to handle sober. He was loving liquor right now Ha, lovin' liquor. Love and liquor. Lovely liquor. Micheal giggled wildly to himself. Reality swelled in and out around him, swirling together with colors, sounds, and images supplied by his own subconscious. Ah hell, he was trashed.

_Is this shit laced with something?_ Micheal wondered, looking down at the offending can as if it had the answer. How many beers had he had? Not enough to mess him up this bad. Now that he thought of it, the others were acting strange too, almost manically goofy. There was something wrong, something in the air, in the _land_, an electricity that hummed and pulsed around them. This was ridiculous, of course, but Micheal couldn't help but feel that there was something alive here, something intertwined with the town Micheal remembered.

"This isn't Gatlin," Micheal blurted suddenly, not really sure what the hell he meant by that.

"What're ya talkin about, man?" Jase slurred slightly as he tried to focus on Micheal's swimming image and the removal of Jess's bra at the same time.

"I just—shit!" Thunder burst around them in a roar.

"Great. Thunder. So B-horror movie," Jess rolled her eyes, and whatever had taken hold of the teens was gone. It was just Gatlin again. Micheal didn't realize he was shaking until the beer can fell from his hand and clanged on the ground.

"I hate these summer storms," Taylor complained, not quite concealing the tremor in her voice, "Loud, freaky noises with no rain."

"Aw, still scared of thunder? I'll protect ya," Bobby poked her before growing serious, "the thunder doesn't do crap for the crops. My Old Man's gonna freak if we don't get some real rain soon." Bobby still lived with his parents, so this was a legitimate concern for him.

"Here's where we wanna be," Micheal muttered when they reached the church, "if we're looking for ghosts or whatever."

The message board outside the building was devoid of its usual white plastic letters, and Micheal was just a little disappointed. What, none of the devil-demon-whatever-worshipers had bothered to spell something creepy?

The inside of the church was really something, though. What looked like blood was smeared on the walls in some sick parody of graffiti, extolling—huh, looks like Jess was right—the mysterious entity known as He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Micheal couldn't help but think that this was a small improvement on the boring building he'd once been forced to waste Sunday mornings in as a child.

Before getting down to "business," Bobby and Taylor and Jase and Jess decided do some less-than-holy things on the pews...and in the confessionals...and on the alter. Micheal tried not to be to jealous that his friends were actually getting some while he skulked around the dusty building.

A soundtrack of thumps, giggles, and groans assaulted Micheal's ears in irregular beats. He kicked a pew and coughed as dust exploded into his face. The stain-glassed windows were destroyed, and little bits of dully sparkling color littered the ground like confetti after New Year's Eve. Not to tidy, these demon-worshipers, Micheal noted.

The couples slowly emerged, faces red and hair mussed, from their respective nooks and crannies.

"Check what we found," Jase swirled his index finger around the rim of a dusty chalice. Micheal caught sight of the sludgy, reddish-black dregs of something unspeakable at the bottom. Taylor looked like she might hurl.

"You'd think they'd take this crap for evidence, or..._something_," Jess breathed, seeming truly unsettled for the first time, "it's like everyone just wants to forget about the whole deal, like Gatlin never existed or something."

"Tell that to the news papers. They can't get enough of our little world of shit," Taylor said tartly. She glanced at the cup again, "I think I'm gonna have a Roman Incident..."

"It's probably just...wine or something," Everybody gave Bobby a look.

_Yeah, it's just wine. Right. Sure._

And damn, it _stank._

"Whatever," Jase looked like he might toss the chalice over his shoulder but instead set it down on one of the pews. It just sat there, since no one had any better idea of what to do with it.

They almost left right then, when presented with physical evidence of what had been happening right under their noses, but they didn't. They stayed and lit some candles with a book of matches Taylor found in her pocket. The somber mood quickly lifted, greatly helped by the booze, as the Ouija board was set up, until one of them would catch a glimpse of that damned chalice.


End file.
